I recently purchased a Gigabyte GA-8IK1100 motherboard and a NEC 2510 DVD RW. Due to my computing needs, I have to split my 2 hard drives across the 2 IDE channels, which forces me to also split my 2 optical drives (the other drive is a TDK VeloCD 48x16x48) across both IDE channels. Unfortunately, no matter which optical drive I install as primary slave, the motherboard/bios refuses to recognize anything connected. I have contacted Gigagbyte technical support, but after several exchanges, their position is the motherboard does not have a problem with recognizing optical drives installed as primary slave. This is the a replacement GA-8IK1100 as I returned the first board with the same problem.

To answer the obvious questions, I have swapped out IDE cables, tried jumpering as slave and as cable select, and tried both drives as primary slave. The motherboard/bios just refuses to recognize either optical drive in this position. One last note, the 2 hard drives are both Maxtor 6Y120P0 drives which are ATA/133. Could having sucah a drive as master on the primary IDE channel confuse the IDE controller and cause it to fail to recognize the optical drive - just a long shot?

Emperor, per Gigabyte technical support, I have the most current BIOS. Minos, the cables are 80 pin. Emperor & Minos, I experiment a lot with this system so I frequently image my system partition to a backup to the hard drive on the secondary IDE channel before making changes. By having them split, it significantly reduces the backup/restore time required for the images.

Therefore, I need to split the hard drives across IDE channels and as a result split the optical drives across IDE channels. From my research, there should not be any inherent restrictions on having an optical drive as primary slave - even the Gigabyte Technical support people agree.

I realize that I have two workaround solutions: (1) a PCI IDE Controller card or (2) an external 5.25 inch USB 2 drive enclosure. Most likely I will go with the USB 2 drive enclosure, but I hate spend extra $ for a workaround after spending $$ for this new motherboard. I will say NewEgg customer service, who replaced the first board have offered to refund my money plus $10 to cover return shipping so I have to give them high marks. However, I have spent so much time swapping components and reinstalling my operating system and software, I will probably stick with the board and do the workaround if I cannot find a solution.

Matthew, over the weekend I tried a spare 80GB ATA/100 drive as Primary slave and the system would not recognize it either. Given I have now tried both optical drives and a hard drive as Primary Slave, the only conclusion is that having the Maxtor ATA/133 as Primary Master somehow confuses the IDE controller (rated at ATA/100) such that it will not see a Primary Slave. Since I like the transfer rate performance I am getting out of the Maxtor, I purchased an external USB 2 case for the DVD drive and resolved the problem that way. That leads to another question, which I will post in a different forum.

I have read that a few have said 2510 does not like being placed as a slave. so that may be an issue aswell. Are the optical drives recognized at all in the bios in either ide channel 1 or 2? try different drive setup config to see if the channels and/or opti drives are working properly. Try to use the mast or slave jumpers on and drives not just cable select.